Oh my.. is that the metaphor the kids are using these days? Man it is hard to keep up with the street lingo these days..

Have fun with your orgy- er.. I mean, "huge".

Will your tank be up against the wall on a short side? Or will it be smack dab in the middle? I would agree that 100gallons isn't that heavy for a floor to support. Someone around here has a 230g as a room divider on their main floor without any extra floor support :-)

^^ Did you have to add support for yours? I can't remember...

For me there is a big difference between the floor holding it and the floor holding it without bounce. You'll certainly have bounce with that volume if there is no additional support from underneath.

I did not. I decided that mine was close enough to a cross beam (whatever those are called; the beam that the joists sit on!), and the tank runs perpendicular to five or six 2x10 joists.

I did ask around, on forums (there are a few builders around here) and at LFSs and *everyone* said about 150g is the top end of what you can comfortably put on the main floor without worrying too much about extra support. That's why I ended up with a 150 rather than say, a 180 or 200+ like Bretts. Beyond that (150g) then you should consider it (extra support). For what that's worth.

What nobody building a tank wants to address is the fact that floors can really vary. We treat a floor as some standard thing when in reality some bounce without a tank on them! Some floor joists are merely 2x8s or whatever...new homes are engineered joists and I think are far stronger.

well, if your overly worried about the floor caving in. Go with a large footprint, and for the base of your stand, make it completely flat, the whole bottom of the stand touching the floor, not just the edges and the main post. Its a trick that is used on the rigs to move the 120000+ lbs worth of equipment, use as many tires as possible to spread all the weight equally all over the place. So if you go with you original dimensions (60" long, 24"deep) thats 1440 square inches of floor space used and about 1100 lbs of weight thats 1.3lbs per sq inch :smile:. Not a whole lot of wieght to be supported when you use all the floor space you can to hold the wieght.

Here's my thread when I asked this question :-)

my thread

We've got 2x12" Wood I-beams spaced 19-20" apart.. to be honest, I haven't seen this style of beam before.. I'll try and get a pic.

If your floor can't support that tank you need to get the heck out of the house. You're talking about less than 1000lbs over more than 8 square feet which is about 120lbs/sqft which also happens to be less than the pressure applied by the average person. I love how we'll cram 30-50 people in our homes or stock our fridges to the max or even take a bath without breaking a sweat but when it comes to a fish tank the rules all of a sudden change. Has anyone actually ever heard of a fish tank falling through the floor? I've seen so many tanks in all kinds of places and yet never once even heard of a tank falling through.

Call up an engineer I'm sure he'll get a good laugh out of later at the bar after you've paid his bill. Or better yet give me a call I could use the money :lol:

All floors are different but if it falls into any typical general standard you're good. Sure if it's rotting from the inside you probably shouldn't do it but like I said if it can't support it move and move quickly :wink:

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